Editor's note: this interview features videos captured from the Japanese version of the game. In the UK & Ireland this game will be available in English.

Today I have asked for staff members from the Tokyo Software Development Department, who worked on Super Mario 3D Land to be here today. Thank you for coming.

We’re pleased to be here.

I heard development entailed quite some challenges. First, would you please introduce yourselves?

I’m Hayashida from the Tokyo Software Development Department. I was the director, and the one who brought up this project. Playing video games in 3D has been a dream of mine since I was a child, so I wanted to make a 3D Mario no matter what.

It was your ambition.

Yes! (laughs) I created a lot of the specs and adjusted the overall game.

I’m Motokura, also from the Tokyo Software Development Department. I was design leader. I was in charge of a variety of things, including design coordination, designing Mario’s movement, demo designs, and determining the broad story.

I’m Sugawara, also from the Tokyo Software Development Department. I was programme leader and also worked on programming enemies like Bowser and Goombas.

I’m Tsujimura from the Tokyo Software Development Department. As planning leader, I coordinated the planning team and helped serve as a bridge between drawing ideas from the team members and reflecting them in the product.

This team has worked on 3D Super Mario Bros. games like the Super Mario Galaxy series¹ for many years. When we talk about 3D here, we mean Mario moving around in polygonal space, and this time it also has stereoscopic three-dimensionality. This is the kind of 3D Super Mario that was Hayashida-san’s dream ever since he was a child, so could you tell us what kind of game you wanted to make and how you got started?

We have worked on 3D Super Mario games for a long time, from Super Mario Sunshine² to Super Mario Galaxy 2. Usually, you would just move Super Mario Galaxy to the Nintendo 3DS system the way it is, but I thought, “Would that really be all right?” So the first thing I said to the team was, “Let’s reset”.

The keyword this time was “reset”.

That’s right. I thought we should rethink the rules from the ground up.

Even 3D Super Mario can be reset.

Yes. We’ve been making home console games the whole time.

Oh, come to think of it, was this your first work on a game for a handheld system?

Yes, it was. So there was a lot I didn’t understand. For example, you can walk around with a handheld system, so some people can play on the train when they commute. I live a few stations away from the station next to the company’s, so at first I thought I should aim for light courses that you could clear in about that time and stop playing whenever you got off the train.

That’s a big difference with the Super Mario Galaxy series.

Yes. To me, Super Mario Galaxy 2 is like the Manchu Han Imperial Feast.

Uh-huh. (laughs)

It’s the kind of game that says, “There’s all this laid out before you, so eat whatever you want!” To eat it all takes hours, so when you finish eating, your stomach is full. We put in everything that had built up since Super Mario Sunshine to make Super Mario Galaxy 2 a game with everything.

You put in more each time and it rapidly grew until it was a luxurious item. But that raised the question of whether that was really alright for all the players.

Yes. So this time, I wanted to make a compact game that, rather than the Manchu Han Imperial Feast, was lighter, like a hamburger you could just gobble down. I decided to start thinking from there.

You wanted to make a game appropriate for a handheld system.

Another task that arose because of Super Mario Galaxy 2 was the divide between fans of 2D Super Mario games and fans of 3D Super Mario games.

Yes, there are people who say, “I play 2D Super Mario, but not 3D Super Mario.” The reason I suggested including the instructional DVD called “Super Mario Galaxy 2 for Beginners”³ with Super Mario Galaxy 2 was because the distance was growing between people who were familiar with 3D Super Mario and those who weren’t, and many were saying “I can’t play those!” before they had even played a 3D Super Mario game. That’s really too bad for people like you who have worked so earnestly on Super Mario in 3D.

We strongly feel that 3D Super Mario is fun and want more people to experience that. (laughs) So this time, even more so than with Super Mario Galaxy 2, we decided we wanted to make a 3D Super Mario game that could be a gateway, as an introduction to all the 3D Super Mario games we made before.

I think there’s a missing link between 2D and 3D Super Mario. To go back in the history of Super Mario, I feel like there is a chasm between Super Mario World⁴ and Super Mario 64.⁵ I wanted to make something that would bridge that gulf, and what did that was the Goal Pole.

You returned to the old 2D Super Mario criteria for clearing a level, which was grabbing the Goal Pole.  In 3D Super Mario games, you always had to get a Star.

That was a big change for us. Unlike the Goal Pole, which was always at the other end of the course, the Star could be hidden somewhere secret.

Like very deep inside the course.

That’s been the fun of a 3D Super Mario game, that element of searching. The appeal was wandering around a broad game field and looking for the goal. But this time, we put that aside and decided to make a game that returns to the original idea of  reaching a Goal Pole at the end of the course.

That’s a big change. Did (Shigeru) Miyamoto-san say anything about that?

I was pretty nervous when I proposed that to Miyamoto-san. But he was like, “Yes, the Goal Pole is synonymous with Mario”. (laughs)

He didn’t know how you felt when you proposed it, but you were a nervous wreck inside!

Exactly! (laughs) He even suggested that, instead of having the flag rise to the top when you cleared the level, we have it only go up as far as you touched the pole. Apparently, he had wanted to do that in the first game, Super Mario Bros.⁶, 26 years ago, but hadn’t been able to do it.

The impression the Goal Pole makes has a big influence over the impression that the game makes. I suppose he thought this was an area that deserved effort.

Later, I asked (Yoshiaki) Koizumi-san⁷, and he said that they tried a Goal Pole once for Super Mario 64.

Oh, is that so?

But at the time, when they thought about what was the most fun about playing in 3D, it was going to all sorts of places and looking for something, so they decided on players getting a Star.

Wandering around provides a lot of freedom but carries with it the problem of not knowing where to go and getting lost. In a 2D Super Mario game, you just keep going towards the right and the Goal Pole is sure to be there. You don’t have to worry about whether you should keep heading in a certain direction.

That’s right. So after that, we started to think about “how we could establish the game world” as we applied the original 2D Super Mario rules for 3D. In other words, we tried to imagine how we should make the courses.

I see. Now, I would like to ask what you were careful about when it came to making the courses this time. How about you, Tsujimura-san?

What we were careful about this time was making courses that would clearly guide the player. We basically designed the courses this time so you head to the right or advance deeper in to reach a definite goal.  We also put in arrows to guide you and made fences on the course. We devised various ways for you to reach the goal.

You mean that you paid attention to even small details so that the player won’t be confused over which way to go.

Yes. We were making adjustments up until the very, very end on the smallest of details. For example,  there’s a scene showing you where, in the distance, the Goal Pole is. That way, you think, “Oh, that’s where the goal is!”

When making a course with a single path like that, as people who had worked on 3D Super Mario for so long, there must have been some tension as you wondered, “Will we lose what was great about 3D Super Mario?” How about that?

May I answer that?

Go ahead.

Please. (laughs)

Actually, the further you proceed in this game, the more the gameplay comes to resemble traditional 3D Super Mario. On the first course, you just have to reach the Goal Pole, but...

It’s wrong to think that every level is a straight course?

Exactly. We’ve prepared something called a Star Medal this time. They’re like the items in New Super Mario Bros.⁸ called Star Coins.⁹ The reason we changed the name is that the Star Medals have the same function as the Stars in 3D Super Mario games up till now. We packed in  gameplay that involves going to various places around the course in order to find them.

To finish the level, all you have to do is reach the Goal Pole, but some players may not find that satisfying enough, so this is a sort of challenge to them to find all the Star Medals. It truly is something to provide the missing link.

That’s right!

Hmm, I can really sense in this your ambition to slowly but surely change players of 2D Mario into players of 3D Mario. (laughs)

(laughs)

You’ve designed the beginning of this game so that it’s okay for people who insist on only playing Super Mario in 2D, but the next thing they know, they’re captivated by the enjoyment of 3D Super Mario.

That’s right. Actually, once you clear all the normal courses and reach the end, there’s a magnificent development waiting. There are so many of these essentially bonus special courses that they practically equal the number of normal courses!

What?! How did it end up like that?!

As we made the original courses, we began to feel as if we wanted to expand gameplay and make something more challenging. We had lots of fun ideas that never made it into the normal courses, and we had to make the normal courses paying attention to strict order, so...

Yes, there are restrictions on the placement of elements in the normal courses. You think it would be cool to use certain transformations and actions at certain spots, but you can’t put them in because they haven’t shown up yet. If you put in too many elements from the start, players will get confused, not knowing what to do.

Exactly. You could say that the special courses let you have fun with all kinds of different variations of gameplay, and I think we did a solid job in preparing something quite challenging.

Earlier 3D Super Mario games are structured so that there are multiple scenarios for a single course. There are various rules, like, “This time, I’m going to get the Star,” or “This time, collect the Red Coins”.

It’s the same world, but you play different ways depending on the mission you get.

That’s right. This time, we adopted that structure for the special courses. It’s sort of like we prepared different scenarios for the same courses as more gameplay for when you finish the normal courses. So there’s 3D Super Mario gameplay after the normal ending.

The next thing you know, you’re playing a 3D Super Mario game.

Which connects to what we discussed earlier. (laughs) In the original Super Mario Bros., once you cleared Level 8-4, you entered a second round. I wanted to adopt that structure. Once you clear the surface world, then the world behind it appears.

That’s why you needed the same number of normal and special courses.

What’s more, there are some new courses among the special ones. The advanced courses that Tsujimura-san makes are really difficult! Tsujimura-san supervised all the special courses, so I hope advanced players will make it to those and experience the Tsujimura courses. (laughs)

Tsujimura-san, that’s a compliment, but you must have slightly complicated feelings about it. (laughs)

No, I really wanted to deliver a challenge. (laughs)

And Luigi appears in the special world.  Like Luigi in Super Mario Galaxy, he can jump really high and is a little harder to stop, but now he’s easier to handle. We adjusted the game so players can enjoy it with either Mario or Luigi.

Well, we really wanted to make a game that’s easy to get into, so we weren’t planning on making it a game full of features. But once we started making it and included the special courses, it turned out to have quite a lot of volume.

I agree that the volume is comparable with even the Super Mario Galaxy games so I’m not sure about it being compact. Sugawara-san, you worked on the programming, so if asked whether the density and volume are compact compared to Super Mario Galaxy, I bet you would think, “It’s not compact at all!” How was it from the point of view of a programmer? (laughs)

Considering the original volume we aimed for, it ballooned to about double the size. To be honest, I thought, “That’s not what you said at all!”

(laughs loudly)

But to me that is how Mario games are made. When Miyamoto-san presented the original Super Mario Bros., he didn’t say it went up to World 8, he said it went up to World 5.

Right, I asked Nakago-san in a past Iwata Asks and they first explained that the game would go up to World 5, and then restructured existing maps for the latter half of the game and made it go up to World 8.

Yes. I analysed Miyamoto-san’s way of making games and tried to make Super Mario 3D Land the way he made 2D games. I showed everyone the minimum volume, started with what looked possible to make, and then added more on. (laughs)

He totally tricked us! (laughs)

Now that you’ve revealed your methods, you’ll have trouble next time!

(laughs)

What kinds of gameplay await the player in the special world?

Some courses are, of course, more difficult than the normal ones, but  some feature fast-paced scrolling or continuous enemies, and the popular Cosmic Clone enemies - shadowy Marios - from Super Mario Galaxy 2 also show up.

And as a reward for clearing the normal courses, there’s Time Attack. You don’t just clear the course, but you can use the StreetPass¹⁰ feature to compete for the best time on all courses.

Oh, so you can use StreetPass with this Super Mario game.

To be honest, it was so hard that at one point we gave up, but Koizumi-san said he definitely wanted to put it in. (laughs) After you clear the normal courses, you unlock the Time Attack mode and can see the times of people you have passed and determine whose skill level is like yours. You have a friendly race with people about your level and enjoy shaving away your times.

Everyone in our office had a great time playing that.

And when players pass each other, they can exchange Mystery Boxes from the last time they played. The type of gameplay to expect with a Mystery Box is  where you try to get a Star Medal by defeating all enemies in ten seconds. If you wipe out all enemies with a Mystery Box that you got through StreetPass, you’re sure to get a Star Medal, but you can also get a bonus, like a 1-Up Mushroom.

When you’re running low on Marios or aren’t making any progress because you can’t get a Star on a certain course, then try out StreetPass!

And this time, you can even pass by people who don’t have the game! If you pass by someone’s Mii character somewhere like the StreetPass Mii Plaza¹¹ application, you can receive an item from that Mii character at Toad’s house. If  you pass by the same Mii character again, you’ll get something better.

It’s the first game ever that allows you to also exchange data with people who don’t even have the same game.

Changing the topic, tell me what was difficult and what made a lasting impression when it came to making a game in stereoscopic 3D for the first time.

The Nintendo 3DS system’s 3D is good at making it look as if there is a world deep beyond the screen, so that is what we made from the start. With images that have lots of depth, there’s a big discrepancy between the images sent to the left and right eyes. With a big difference like that, if you don’t play holding the system directly in front of you, there’s a big possibility that the images will look distorted. With a normal game, that isn’t a problem, but people move their bodies when they play action games.

The distance Mario jumps won’t change if you move the controller, but you do this (moving his body) anyway. It isn’t a Super Mario game if it doesn’t make you do that! (laughs)

That’s right. A good action game makes you move your body. But it’s a problem if that distorts the visuals. Then Miyamoto-san said that Mario Kart 7¹² doesn’t get blurry. I took a look, and it really didn’t. I wondered why and came to understand it was because the player’s kart was placed in a location where there is no binocular parallax. While driving, the players are looking at their own kart, so it doesn’t look blurry. So what will people be looking at in Super Mario 3D Land?

Mario, of course.

Exactly. It’s Mario. We call that place where there is no disparity between the left and right eyes the reference plane. We thought we would adjust the reference plane to Mario, so he would be less likely to blur. That gave birth to the Normal View.

That change came in when the game was nearly complete. I was surprised to hear that your team reworked the viewpoint this late in production.

We’d passed one month left at that point. (laughs) About 80 percent of people responded that the Normal View made it more comfortable. But about 10 or 20 percent said that it was better before. So we thought we would leave the previous view, and that became Extended Depth. You can change between the two views with the +Control Pad.

How about you, Motokura-san?

Design-wise, more data makes it easier to generate stereoscopy, but the eye may get tired more easily. We cut down on this game’s density and made easy-to-grasp graphics, so Normal View was welcome.

Actually, Motokura-san had suggested making Mario the reference plane toward the beginning of development, but when we did that, things popped out too much. So we gave up on it once.

When Mario is the reference plane, anything in front of him would pop out, so without a significant amount of adjustment, your eyes would tend to get more tired.

That’s right. But up until the very end, I kept hearing about how they had done it with Mario Kart 7. By weakening the strength of stereoscopy and changing the camera, things stopped leaping out too much.

We also made it so you can play it with the 3D depth slider turned off. For example, a rule in 3D Super Mario games is that if an object is in the air, there is a shadow directly beneath it. If you look at the shadow of a Coin or Block, you know that is where you should jump.

That also goes for the shadows cast on top of enemies. So that it would be easy to play even without 3D, we made it so the player’s shadow falls right on top of the enemies. That makes it easier to jump on them.

Rather than making it comprehensible because it is 3D, you made it comprehensible even without 3D. Of course, it’s easier to see because it’s in stereoscopic 3D. On the other hand, what kinds of gameplay in it are tailored to the Nintendo 3DS system?

There is gameplay that makes an impact precisely because it is on the Nintendo 3DS system-like  avoiding the iron ball of a pendulum swinging back and forth and an iron club suddenly shooting forward.

And  that part where Bowser breathes fire at you.

When it comes to stereoscopic 3D, everyone on the team wants to make things that shoot out at you. (laughs) For example, on the first course,  a coin comes down the river and hops out. That movement is weird, but we...

We wanted people to see that in 3D. (laughs)

The game testers had some interesting opinions this time. For those common scenes in which Mario falls to the bottom of a pit, people said, “It’s so high I’m scared!” So we readjusted the height once more.

You changed it because it was scary? (laughs)

That scene was also in past games in the series, but this was the first time that we had heard that opinion.

That’s a difference in how realistic it is.

And so far in the 3D Super Mario games, we have included jump aids like Hover Nozzle in Super Mario Sunshine and Spin in Super Mario Galaxy and Yoshi’s Flutter Jump in Super Mario Galaxy 2. This time, it’s easier because of the stereoscopy to see the position of the platforms, so we tried dropping the jump aids.

That was decisive.

Yes. (laughs) But when Mario transforms into  Tanooki Mario, he falls slowly, which is a sort of jump aid. I hope new players will use Tanooki Mario, while advanced players challenge themselves with the normal Mario.

Tanooki Mario reminded me of the video we showed at the Nintendo 3DS Conference 2011.¹³  Bowser had a tail. That was my first time to see it and I thought, “What is this?!” I was astounded. (laughs)

(laughs)

I was baffled and thought, “What’s going on? Do all kinds of Bowsers show up?” (laughs)

Ahh, those kinds of reactions make me happy!

Let me ask about Bowser with a tail. How did he come about? How did you get approval?

Approval... Well, the final determination was “Give him a tail! Give him a tail!”

(laughs)

“Give him tail! Give him a tail!” Really? (laughs)

Yes. Before the tail, though, there was Tanooki Mario. Then, when we were thinking about how we would pull the design together and how we needed a new idea, I thought, “We’ll put a tail on the Goombas”. I did a sketch of a Goomba with a tail and took it to the enemy designer, and he said, “I was just thinking about doing that!”

Really? By coincidence?!

Yes! I asked that designer to ask Hayashida-san, and Hayashida-san also...

Right away, I answered, “Great!” I said, “Give him a tail! Give him a tail!” (laughs)

Oh, so that’s where “Give him a tail! Give him a tail!” comes from! (laughs) But there’s a big difference between the steps you take in giving the Goombas tails and giving Bowser a tail, isn’t there?

That’s true. But by the time we had given Mario a tail, we had cleared the highest hurdle. Back in the first game, Super Mario Bros.,  if you hit Bowser with a fireball, he turned out to be a Goomba!, so we wanted to pay homage to that. We thought we could have a Goomba use a Super Leaf to turn into a Tanooki-tailed Bowser. That’s how we made those.

I see. And you were nervous when you presented that to Miyamoto-san. How did he react?

Surprisingly, he was totally okay with it.

(laughs)

(Takashi) Tezuka-san¹⁴, who has mainly worked on 2D Super Mario games, commented, “It’d be cool if more things had tails!”

So he was also saying, “Give them tails! Give them tails!” (laughs)

The next thing I knew, the designer had been adding to  Bullet Bill, Thwomp, and Boo, too!

Even the logo design for Super Mario 3D Land has a tail. Did you add that after the series of changes?

No, before.

Oh, really! That tail just has control over you lot! (laughs)

That logo is based on the silhouette of the tail in the logo for
Super Mario Bros. 3.¹⁵

It is true that the logo design puts you in mind of Super Mario Bros. 3?

Yes. Miyamoto-san said that Tanooki Mario is inextricably linked with Super Mario Bros. 3, and the hardware this time is the Nintendo 3DS system, so if the title could be something like Super Mario 3DS, we thought it would be a perfect fit!

Eh? Is that a play on the number three?!

(laughs)

And when you talk about Tanooki Mario appearing, people always ask, “Will Statue Mario appear, too?”

Hayashida-san was going around chanting, “Statue Mario...Statue Mario...” so we put it in.

Like, “Put that in! Put that in!” (laughs)

But when told to put in Statue Mario this time, it was Sugawara-san as programmer who had the most trouble.

When Mario turns into Statue Mario, the enemies stop chasing him. The Goombas do chase Mario, though, but having them come after him as Statue Mario would be weird. So we had to make a big structural change by making  the enemy characters ignore Statue Mario.

That had an influence over the whole system of the game.

I repeated things like that over and over...

And they just request it to Sugawara-san like it’s nothing.

This is the first 3D Super Mario Bros. game. I wanted the transformations to carry over to the next course. That meant that every course had to respond to Statue Mario.

That’s right. We ran into all kinds of situations that we had never imagined before, like what would happen when Statue Mario does a Ground Pound - would he defeat a moray eel?

(laughs)

We had to make stuff like that, too.

You can count on the programmers! You could use this occasion to make him an apology, you know. (laughs)

Yes, I do think it must have been hard for the programmers. (laughs)

In addition to Statue Mario, we had them add a Boomerang Mario and Propeller Box. Boomerang Mario pays homage to Hammer Mario¹⁶ in Super Mario Bros. 3. Unlike fire, the Boomerang goes through enemies and then returns.  If you throw it once and miss, it comes back to Mario, so it’s easier to hit enemies with it.

And it’s useful, because when  Mario can’t reach a Star Medal, he can use the Boomerang to get it.

Visually, the Propeller Box is funny.  It looks like you’re wearing it! It looks amazing in 3D space, so I hope many people will play and enjoy it.

Visually it’s funny? But didn’t you want to make it?! (laughs) He’s been mumbling about a Box Mario ever since Super Mario Galaxy.

Oh, that’s right! (laughs)

On the theme of boxes, we also slipped in a  Mario wearing a Question Block. With that on, you knock out coins as you move around.

It looks just like a regular Question Block, though. At first, I thought it was a bug! (laughs)

What about the coins?

When you have the block on, the coins are collected automatically.

Oh, you get them automatically?

Yes. Until now in 3D Super Mario games, if I stepped on a Goomba, for example, and a coin came out, I would go back and get each one. Tezuka-san said that making the player go back was ungenerous. In the 2D Super Mario games that Tezuka-san made, when you stepped on a Goomba, a coin wouldn’t come out, but your score would go up, so you would just jump along crushing them.

The tempo is better that way. At first, it was just fun running around in a 3D space, so going back to collect the coins was fine, but now that it’s become normal, he pointed out that perhaps it just ruins the tempo.

That’s right. We hadn’t fully reset after all.

Come to think of it, I heard that Tezuka-san said some pretty harsh things to you.

I think what Tezuka-san pays the most attention to in a video game is how fun it is, how good it feels. So I just recently realised that that’s the reason he doesn’t want to go back and collect coins.

Just recently...after working together for so long? (laughs)

 In New Super Mario Bros. Mega Mario tromps along defeating enemies. That was an awful thing to do to the people who made the course!

Because Mario is destroying game mechanics! (laughs)

But I think he just thinks, “It’s fun, so it’s okay!”

The phrase, “It’s fun, so it’s okay!” really does fit Tezuka-san. (laughs)

We also talked about Checkpoint Flags. In the 3D Super Mario games we’ve made, we placed Checkpoint Flags midway through the levels. Then, when you lose a Mario, you start again at that point.

But in New Super Mario Bros., for some reason, just passing a Checkpoint Flag as Mini Mario returned you to the normal-sized Mario. Tezuka-san asked, “Why doesn’t Mario get bigger this time?” And we asked back, “Why should he get bigger?”

Yes. If you think about it... it doesn’t make any sense. (laughs)

Tezuka-san answered that it was a bonus. We said, “Bonus? Why a bonus?!” (laughs) Until then, we had focused, after the example of Miyamoto-san, on functionality. So we had established the Checkpoint Flags to function as a place where you could come back to the course.

So you wondered why there was a bonus there. (laughs)

Exactly.

But he said, “It’s fun, so it’s okay!” (laughs)

And that settled it.

Another thing Tezuka-san didn’t like was mean placement - like an enemy right after a jump or an enemy right after a coin - so we fixed those things.

He wants the players to enjoy playing the game. No dirty tricks!

So we made the gameplay this time very straightforward. Putting in curveballs and challenging gameplay is the way people who are used to playing the game think. A lot of that simply looks mean-spirited to beginners. We regret that and are fixing it. But we’re also putting a lot of it in the special courses. (laughs)

Tezuka-san cautioned you against anything that would stress out or disappoint the players, so it turned out to be a game that players used to 2D Super Mario can play more naturally.

In addition to Normal View and Extended Depth, did Miyamoto-san say anything to you toward the end?

Yes. This time, he was very particular about making adjustments on how the game felt to the players.

Like jumps - stopping and jumping, and running and jumping.

In 3D Super Mario games to that point, we thought the difference between the height of a standing jump and the height of a running jump had been the same. But this time, Miyamoto-san said, “Let’s make a running jump higher”. Then when I looked at an old strategy guide for previous games, I noticed this was already the case.

(laughs)

But from the flow of the conversation, it appeared Miyamoto-san had forgotten that.

Nevertheless, as he played it, Miyamoto-san felt something was a bit strange, so he had to ask us, “Isn’t Mario supposed to jump higher here?” Then, when we actually compared, we saw that other previous games were made that way, too. It’s amazing how he can pick up on that.

He also talked about the Roll and Long Jump.

Oh, those.

I think the Roll falls among those actions that Miyamoto-san said in a video at Nintendo 3DS Conference 2011^* recently aren’t necessary for clearing the game. Early on, you would run and crouch to slide forward. He said that those controls weren’t intuitive. Crouching to do that didn’t make immediate sense.

Miyamoto-san is very critical of something that doesn’t feel right physically. And it’s a bodily sense that tells you a standing jump and a running jump should result in jumping different distances.

So we used something else instead of running and crouching as the controls for the Roll. And at first, we had the idea of resetting everything in our mindset, so we weren’t thinking about putting in the Long Jump, but Miyamoto-san wanted to, so we included it in such a way as to fit well with Super Mario in 3D.

When you play it, the Roll and Long Jump serve distinct purposes, resulting in pleasantly broad gameplay. They may not look useful at first, but once you use them a lot, and try them in a Time Attack, there are places you can tear through faster than you can as Tanooki Mario.

Even to those who like to play the game using standard techniques, it’ll be surprising to see how much you can do after mastering them.

Yes. There are all kinds of power-ups, but it’s a fast and rewarding game to those who like to play the straightforward way.

In the history of 3D Super Mario games, the Long Jump is the most advanced action. If you can do the Long Jump, you’re an advanced player of Super Mario in 3D. We made this game so it kept that.

When you can do several Wall Jumps in a row and the Long Jump, your physical skills have matured.

Yes. We made the Long Jump pretty solid as far as long jumps go, and this time we also made the  Roll and Rolling Long Jump to be advanced actions that surpass the Long Jump.

Miyamoto-san said that features that allow players who are good at actions to just fly past a load of stuff on the courses are absolutely fine for a Super Mario game.

By putting in the Long Jump and Roll, you were able to put in plenty of elements that fans of 3D Super Mario games can enjoy.

Lastly, could you each please say something to the fans? If there is something in particular that you would like them to enjoy, please mention it.

There are a lot of scenes in this game that will make you smile as you play. I do, of course, want players who are new to Super Mario in 3D to enjoy this game, but earlier we talked about Super Mario Bros. 3, right? Super Mario 3D Land has lots of highlights and nods to the game that will make players of previous games think, “Hmm, I’ve seen this somewhere before...” I hope the players will search through the whole game for such highlights.

It would be amazing if someone could spot them all! Alright, Sugawara-san?

Schedule-wise, we were packing all sorts of stuff in and making adjustments right up until the very end. We really were tinkering with it right up to the last second - even more so than ever before. I hope people will enjoy what we have done. For example,  if you drop a stone in one of the pipes, a 1-Up Mushroom will come out!

The Legend of Zelda team says things like “We’re going to do all that?!” and it seems like the Super Mario team has caught that bug! (laughs) Okay, Motokura-san?

Something that never came up during this interview but is in this game are 3D illustrations. As you progress with the story, you get some illustrations with a nostalgic 2D touch telling you the current state of Princess Peach. They’re really enjoyable.

This feature is also used in the TV commercial (in Japan). You use the gyro sensor, so  if you shake the system, the illustration shakes accordingly.

That’s right. We paid attention to finer points like that, too, so I hope everyone will check them out.

And finally, how about you Hayashida-san?

I really do hope a wide variety of people from beginners to advanced players will play this game. For new players, we put in two types of Assist Blocks - the Invincibility Leaf, which helps you stay as the invincible Tanooki Mario for a long time, and the P-Wing, which helps you fly near Checkpoint Flags and Goal Poles. Some courses are difficult to clear even with the invincible Tanooki Mario, so at times like that, use the P-Wing.

You made it so that when people run into some area they can’t clear, they have a way to move forward. There aren’t any places to make you say, “I can’t get past this!” But you can also enjoy the game by trying to make it to the end without using such aids.

Assist Blocks show up after five misses, so I hope advanced players will try to avoid having them appear. Also, if you get Game Over, you can go into  Toad House to get a hint. We made it in the hope that all kinds of people will play it, from players of previous 3D Super Mario games to children and people who think Super Mario games are difficult, so I hope they will play it.

The same people made the original 2D and the original 3D Super Mario games, so it’s not like their roots are different. However, as they each grew and developed, they grew apart. You made Super Mario 3D Land in a way that would connect them again.

Stereoscopic 3D came along and you were able to create a bridge between 2D Super Mario and 3D Super Mario. I can’t wait to see with my own eyes how this game decreases people’s resistance to 3D Super Mario and creates a bridge. Thank you very much for your time today.

Thank you!